Calming Play

 I had one of those middle of the night thoughts about a book to make. It has a purpose - an exhibition looms - but it will bring together a few things I am trying to do at the moment - making use of things I already have in the studio (which acts as a kind of limitation to work with, and against) and my ongoing ponderings about two homes.

I went to the studio and found this work box. Full of lots of small, beautiful handmade papers and special papers that have been waiting to be used since forever. Like there is a bundle of papers I bought in Paris in  2014 still waiting...

I also wanted to use up some perspex that has been sitting in a box since we did the Queensland Literary Awards back in 2013. These were the bits left over when they cut out the centre panel to hold the metal panel. 

So I played around with some paper from the box to see what might fit. And came up with this pleasing set of options.

For the trial/test I grabbed a thick and a thinner crochet cotton. Just to see.

It's ridiculous how happy an image like this makes me - deep sigh.

So I did three lines of each cotton on the wafer thin handmade paper from New Zealand (circa 2016)

And three lines of each on some of the beautiful Parisienne paper.

And am now pondering which works best.